Robert Graves Quotations

One smile relieves a heart that grievesthough deadly sad it be,and one hard look Can close the book that lovers love to see.

Across two counties he can hear / And catch your words before you speak. / The woodlouse or the maggot's weak / Clamour rings in his sad ear, / And noise so slight it would surpass / Credence.

Myths are seldom simple, and never irresponsible.

A well-chosen anthology is a complete dispensary of medicine for the more common mental disorders, and may be used as much for prevention as cure.

Through the window I can see Rooks above the cherry-tree, Sparrows in the violet bed, Bramble-bush and bumble-bee, And old red bracken smoulders still Among boulders on the hill, Far too bright to seem quite dead. But old Death, who can't forget, Waits his time and watches yet, Waits and watches by the door.

What we now call "finance" is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.

I don't really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn't create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people.

There's a cool web of language winds us in, Retreat from too much joy or too much fear: We grow sea-green at last and coldly die In brininess and volubility.

Entrance and exit wounds are silvered clean, The track aches only when the rain reminds. The one-legged man forgets his leg of wood, The one-armed man his jointed wooden arm. The blinded man sees with his ears and hands As much or more than once with both his eyes.

Where nature with accustomed round Sweeps and garnishes the ground With kindly beauty, warm or cold Alternate seasons never old: Heathen, how furiously you rage, Cursing this blood and brimstone age, How furiously against your will You kill and kill again, and kill: All thought of peace behind you cast, Till like small boys with fear aghast, Each cries for God to understand, 'I could not help it, it was my hand.